The rising death toll and cost of the protracted conflict -- Washington is spending about $10 billion a month on the war -- has helped turn public opinion against the war in Afghanistan, particularly in Europe.

With the activation of the Northern Distribution Network to supply the nearly ten-year war in Afghanistan, all but two of fifteen former Soviet Republics – Moldova and Ukraine – have been incorporated into troop and equipment transit routes for the world’s longest armed conflict: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

In January the Russian government announced that U.S. and NATO flights over the country in support of the Afghan war had reached “up to 4,500 flights in one direction in a year.”

The next month Voice of Russia, citing Foreign Ministry figures, revealed that 15,000 U.S. military personnel and over 20,000 tons of cargo had crossed Russian territory en route to Afghanistan since October of 2009.

The ever-expanding range of U.S. military activities reached a new point last month when the Pentagon dispatched a C-5 Galaxy transport plane on a direct, non-stop flight from the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware across Canada and over the North Pole, then over Russia and Kazakhstan into the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.

Lawyer Rashad Salameh* told Al-Manar Website that the latest incidents in Syria were a proof that the opposition movement, which started with legal reform demands, turned to something else. He noted that the Syrian regime positively dealt with the reform demands, mainly in relation with the multiplicity of parties, amendment of the constitution, holding the elections, reinforcing political life, and increasing freedoms.

But Salameh said that incidents showed that military operations were taking place on ground, and backed his idea by pointing to the huge number of martyrs within the security forces and innocent civilians. “This huge number of martyrs signals that there’s an armed and financed side behind the incidents. It also shows that this side was well-prepared for these acts,” he added.